


Countdown to Forgiveness

by not4cat



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: 5 times + 1, Andy | Andromache of Scythia Regains Immortality, Booker | Sebastien le Livre-centric, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Minor Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Minor Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:48:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25991608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/not4cat/pseuds/not4cat
Summary: Booker has resigned himself to spending the next 100 years getting drunk and testing how much it took for his liver to stop being able to heal itself. He did not account for Quynh.
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Quynh | Noriko, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 252





	Countdown to Forgiveness

**Author's Note:**

> If you understand French, beware the swear word masquerading as a name.

**T-100 years**

Booker is drunk. Getting a beer in the pub his family decided to banish in him was a terrible idea because one had become two and then he lost count until there were fourteen empty pint glasses in front of him. He wasn’t sure why none of the staff had cut him off, but he was happy to allow himself to grieve.

Throwing what he hoped was enough cash onto the table, he stumbled out. The first cab he saw screeched to a halt when Booker fell into the street.

Booker got in, too drunk to care about the driver’s protests. “Heathrow airport,” he snapped, closed his eyes, and passed out.

**T-99 years and 6 months**

Quynh is in his apartment. Alcohol dulled instincts kick into overdrive. Booker moves into the room carefully, unsure of why she’s there, but Quynh is fast, too fast for him to react to in his state, and grabs his wrist and knocks the gun to the floor. Her glass lies shattered on the floor, but Booker can’t remember seeing it fall.

“I mean no harm.” She lets go.

Booker steps away as quickly as he can, not used to being touched after six months of isolation. He doesn’t remember dreaming of Quynh’s escape from her watery grave, too drunk, but he knows Nile has and that the rest of his family would be looking for her. He might as well make their lives easier. 

He pulls out his phone, dialling Copley’s number because it’s the only one he knows has stayed the same after his exile. “I’ll call Andy. I know you want to see your family again.”

Quynh knocks the phone out of his hands, catching it before it hits the floor. “I do not wish to see Andromache. If I give you your phone, will you refrain from calling her?”

Quynh must have been out of the water long enough for someone to teach her what she had missed, Booker notes as he grabs his phone back. “Nile will still dream of you, and if she dreams of me as well, they will know where to look for you.”

Booker moved carefully away from her and deeper into the apartment and collapsed onto one of the cheap armchairs, telegraphing his movements carefully to Quynh. She sat primly on the couch across from him.

“Andromache will be disappointed if she comes looking to drag me along with her. I have dreamt of you for 200 years. I wish to get to know you.” Quynh must have predicted his next question because she continued. “I have dreamt of you for longer than I have of the other girl. I have learnt about my family through you. I wish to thank you for letting me see something other than water while I was trapped.”

“I betrayed your family” he tried. Booker didn’t doubt that they would all be on their way to Paris as soon as Nile saw him with Quynh and they would not trust him enough to leave Quynh with him. “They will not be happy with that decision.”

Quynh leaned back into the couch, still looking like royalty. “I considered killing them myself, especially in the first years of seeing them through your eyes, seeing how they had given up on looking for me.” She paused, considering what he said. “You thought you were helping them, and it is not me that you hurt. If they think that they have the power to control my decisions, they are wrong.”

Booker heaved a sigh. He leaned back into the armchair, deciding to let the potentially insane immortal have her way. “You’ll change your mind soon enough.” 

He fell asleep, feeling surprisingly safe in Quynh’s company. He would have been able to sleep for longer, particularly with no dreams of Quynh drowning to plague him, only for Joe to knock his door off its hinges three hours later.

**T-97 Years**

Quynh did not change her mind. Instead, she’d told Andy that she was going to do as she wished and what all of them could do with their opinions on that. Then made herself comfortable in Booker’s apartment and refused to be moved out.

At first, the rest of the family would visit as often as they could, and Booker would not have been surprised if they had bought an apartment somewhere nearby. However, Quynh had very quickly caught on to how uncomfortable Booker became any time they barged in, angrily judging or ignoring him in turn. So, she started stabbing them whenever they showed up.

The first time Andy came by, Quynh, who was aware that Andy was no longer immortal, still threw the kitchen knife at her. It caught Andy in the shoulder and Booker had frozen as he came out of the living room. He was debating whether to call Joe, Nile, or an ambulance when Andy pulled the knife out herself and then looked at the wound carefully. It began to inch closed slowly, to Booker’s surprise.

“Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t” Andy answered the unspoken question. “After the labs, I healed in the car, which was a surprise. Hopefully, the next time I die will be a day it works, but I’ll be around for a while regardless.”

She turned to Quynh, handing her the knife, handle first. “We’ll stay away if that’s what you want, but we make no promised to trust Booker, so stay in touch.” A sharp look in Booker’s direction and then she was gone again.

Quynh threw the knife into the sink and chose another one from the cutlery drawer. “Well, that’s one less problem,” she said, calm and collected as always.

Booker nodded uncertainly, not wanting to anger her as well. Then he realised what she was doing. “Quynh, that’s a people knife! Don’t use it to chop onions, that’ll just sting more the next time you stab someone with it!”

**T-87 years**

Quynh did get tired of living in Booker’s terrible apartment, and after the fifth break-in, she demanded they move. Booker wasn’t sure when Quynh had gone from a houseguest to his roommate, but he let her house hunt and packed up his books when the time came.  


He wasn’t sure how, but it took him nearly six months after they moved to notice that most of his alcohol had stayed in the rundown mess of the old apartment. He smiled and went to tell Quynh that they needed to go to the store if she needed rum-soaked raisins for her cake. He didn’t regret leaving those bottles behind.

It was during moving that Booker finally figured out how Quynh had gotten out from her underwater grave and learnt about the world that she had missed. The iron rusted, Nile’s appearance had given back her will to fight against the ocean, and she broke out. She drowned multiple times getting to the surface where a fisherman’s daughter found her and thinking she had a strange form of amnesia, tried to help her regain the memories of the world that she had never had.

It was just over thirteen years after the day in London when the two of them stubbled into their apartment, covered head to toe in blood, only to find the other four immortals sat in their kitchen. The six of them stared at each other in silence for a long while.

Andy was the first to break the silence. “Go shower. We can talk later.”

Booker was the first one out. He ignored the four’s looks and turned on the kettle, measuring out coffee into two mugs. By the time he had finished, Quynh was coming out, yawning.

“What were you guys doing?” Nile finally asked.

Booker barely restrained a smile. It was nice to know that over ten years in Andy’s company was not enough to change her attitude. “The six of us only have one true marketable skill,” he said, blowing on his coffee, “It would be a shame to put them to waste.”

“I resent that” Joe muttered to Nicky before facing Booker. “Should we expect the police to be joining us?”

“No,” Quynh answered shortly, pouring cream into her coffee until it was pale and then adding a heaped spoonful of sugar. “There was a sex trafficking ring. It doesn’t exist any more.” She took a small sip of the coffee, grimaced, and added more sugar. “What did you want?”

Andy unfolded herself from where she was sitting on their counter. “Connard Puant?”

“Yes,” Booker answered, “Quynh took care of him herself.” He looked around the room as he drained his cup. “Is that why you’re here?”

Joe studied the two of them. “Copley vetted the mission. We thought we could try to work together as a team again.”  


Setting down her still full cup, Quynh moved towards the front door. “We’re very sorry that we dealt with the problem before you decided it was important enough to deal with.” She glanced at Booker, noted his smirk, and turned back to the rest of them. “Or maybe you didn’t decide it was important if you were willing to risk the lives of innocent bystanders with petty squabbles.”

She opened the door, looking pointedly at them. Nile was the first to take the dismissal for what it was. Nicky and Joe followed behind her.

Andy was slower to leave. “Quynh…” she tried.

“Next time, call us when you’re planning so that we have input rather than throwing us table scraps when you deem fit.” She paused. She stood up onto her toes and pressed a kiss to Andy’s cheek. “Don’t be a stranger, Andromache.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen her go that red,” Booker whispered conspiratorially to Quynh as she closed the door, knowing that Andy would hear him.

“You haven’t been around her when I am there. I specialise in making Andromache of Scythia turn red. You will see with time.”

Booker gestured to her mug. “Are you going to finish that?”

Quynh grimaced in answer. “I couldn’t understand why people drank coffee before, and I’m surprised that they still drink it today.”

He laughed as he poured it down the sink. “I’ll make you tea then.”

**T-84 years**

It took Andy three years to offer them another mission with the rest of them. Booker and Quynh had done more than a few of their own since then. He didn’t doubt that the others had done the same.

They were back in South Sudan, back where it had all started, with another trafficking ring. Booker was sure that Andy had picked the one mission that would throw the six of them into the deep end. The only reason he agreed was that Quynh, whom he had told everything about what had happened, would be there to watch his back.

They were 800 meters away from the compound from where the ring was operating. “We work as a team or not at all” Andy says, the six of them hidden from sight by the darkness. “Quynh with Nile, Sebastien with Joe, Nicky, watch our backs.”

Booker and Quynh exchanged looks, then nodded at Andy. Nicky set up his rifle, and they were gone, disappearing into the darkness. Booker pretended not to notice Quynh hissing a threat to Joe as they waited for Nicky’s signal.

Joe was moving seconds before Nicky’s shot hit the guard on the walls. Booker followed, trusting that Nile would protect Quynh even if only because she was afraid of Andy’s retribution.

They cut a bloody path through the compound, working seamlessly together as they had fifteen years ago, Booker forgetting for a second that it wasn’t Quynh fighting next to him but rather Joe. He could hear Nile and Quynh fighting their way through on their left, Andy setting off a chain of explosions to their right completely unsurprisingly.

Dawn was breaking when they joined with the other three in the centre of the compound, facing a heavy iron door behind which Copley suspected the innocent prisoners were. Andy was favouring her right side as she stood, but Booker could see a shallow cut on her face healing, so he wasn’t too worried, particularly since Quynh was fussing over her already. 

Joe raised a hand to signal to Nicky. A shot hit the top of the doorway in answer. Booker glanced around the team and then, noting that the door was locked, picked the lock.

The room was dark, the prisoners inside shrinking away from the light they let in. Booker noticed the way they flinched away from him and Joe, and trading glances, they moved outside.

“At least there wasn’t a pile of shoes” Booker muttered and was surprised when Joe snorted. There was silence, the voices of the women within the cell coming distantly through the thick walls. “I know it doesn’t mean anything to you, but I am sorry.”

“I know. We all talked, afterwards, when we weren’t as angry.” Joe surprised Booker again. “I have Nicky, and Andy had Quynh, at least in the beginning, and she has her now, but we weren’t nice to you back then, not like we were to Nile.”

Joe paused, thinking. “Even without Quynh coming back, I don’t think we could have left you out for all those hundred years. We could all understand why you did it when we had had the time to process it.”

Booker checked their surroundings quickly. “What are you trying to say?” 

“Come home, Sebastien?” A hand reached out, finding itself on Booker’s shoulder.

Before he could answer, Nile joins them outside, not noticing the tension between them. “Copley has people coming to the closest village in six hours to get those people to the hospital. Most of them can walk, so we should be able to get there in half that.”

For a second, Booker thinks that Joe has forgotten his question, but then Nile turns to him. “I’m happy you’re coming home,” she says as she disappears back inside to help Andy.

**T-Error**

When they got back to Paris, the cathedral down the street from them was ringing in the start of their Saint Cecilia mass and the sky seemed ready to open up at any second. Quynh and Booker climbed the stairs to their apartment, the other four immortals following them up.

Booker suddenly understood why Quynh had insisted on buying so much furniture, but at least their apartment could handle having six people gathered in their home. Nicky had decided to take full control of their kitchen and was voicing his opinions about their lack of ingredients to Joe in old Genoese.

Quynh, instead of taking one of the empty seats around the table, leaned against Andy’s side and was talking animatedly to Nile. Her hand was tracing circles on the back of Andy’s neck, and Booker could see what she meant about making the oldest immortal turn red.

“Will you come home, Booker?” Andy asked. The kitchen was silent, save for the bubbling of Nicky’s cooking. 

For a second, Booker could only think of how this was about getting Quynh back. Quickly he realised that no, it was an offer of forgiveness and acceptance. Outside, sunlight broke through the clouds, casting golden rays through the window.

He opened his mouth to speak, Nile leaned forward in her chair, and then he realised what Nicky was doing. “What is wrong with you people?” He cried out, jerking forward and snatching the knife Nicky was using to chop garlic from his hands. “People knives are meant for stabbing not for cooking. You’re going to damage the blade if you use them to cut vegetables. What is wrong with my kitchen knives that you have to avoid them?”

The silence became deafening. Then, Quynh started laughing, followed by the other immortals joining in, Nicky staring at the knife in Booker’s hand in confusion.

**Author's Note:**

> I did not think that this is what I would be doing this summer... It is what it is. I Have not read the comics, yet.
> 
> For anyone who is curious, Connard Puant means stinky asshole and it kind of sounds like a name. Anyways, I wanted to be more graphic with Quynh's anger at him but there wasn't a good way to depict it.
> 
> Twig, it's not a weapon, but you do have your mention. Smh.


End file.
